ControlScan, like some other companies, offered a variety of seals, such as their Verified Secure Seals, which indicate that they have tested a site and found it to be secure according to a variety of criteria. The FTC charged that ControlScan provided these seals to sites with "little or no verification" that they met the criteria. Some of the seals showed a date indicating the currency of the testing, but the FTC said that ControlScan, in many cases, did not test with the frequency indicated in the seals.

The consent agreement with ControlScan and with Richard Stanton, the founder and former CEO of ControlScan, bars them from making such misleading statements. It orders them to contact all their customers and have them take down their seals. Stanton forfeits $102,000 in ill-gotten gains. A $750,000 judgement against ControlScan is suspended based on their inability to pay.

According to their web site, ControlScan is still offering these services. The seal on their own site says it is scanned weekly.

About the Author

Larry Seltzer has been writing software for and English about computers ever sincemuch to his own amazementhe graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.
He was one of the authors of NPL and NPL-R, fourth-generation languages for microcomputers by the now-defunct DeskTop Software Corporation. (Larry is sad to find See Full Bio

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